Antebellum
by Bellicose Blue
Summary: It's the night before the Games or the calm before the storm. Either way, Clove knows she's doomed.


**A/N:** I wrote this yesterday in an hour with just the title as inspiration. I don't even know what to say.

* * *

Bare feet sink into the carpet. She tucks her thin robe tighter around herself and peers around the corner. The hallway is empty and still, and after a moment, she steps out into it.

The room she's looking for is all the way on the other side of the hall, about as far from her bedroom as they could manage. A light under a door tells her that her mentor is still awake, probably running through the list of sponsors once more and scheduling when to deliver gifts, but Clove's been able to move silently ever since she realized how much better her parents were when they were asleep. She eases past Lyme's door and pauses a moment, but there's no movement from inside, so she continues.

Brutus's door is dark, no surprise there. He's spent nearly every night at the Capitol in the company of beautiful people with hollow eyes, rarely returning until well into the morning. But he's not who she's looking for, either.

She stops in front of the final door, hand poised to knock. What if he doesn't want to see her? What if he's too busy thinking of how he's going to win, of how he's going to watch her die? _Shut up,_ she tells herself. She knocks.

A long silence, then a shuffling noise inside. The door opens a crack, and she registers a single eye blinking at her before the door opens all the way. "Clove?" Cato whispers. "What are you doing here?"

She can't stop herself from staring at him. He's a creature of the light, the sun and sky given flesh, born to brightness and joy. He doesn't belong in this shadowed hallway, not like her. "Nothing," she says, already turning away. "It doesn't matter."

"Clove," he sighs, exasperated. "Don't do this."

She looks over her shoulder at him. "Don't do what?"

He makes an irritated gesture that she can barely see in the darkness. "This- this whole 'ignoring each other' thing. Look, tomorrow we'll be in the arena, and we'll be stuck together whether you like it or not-"

"Not if I kill you first," she interrupts, but it's an empty threat, and they both know it.

"Right," he says, and he'd be rolling her eyes if she could see it. "But until _that_ happens, we've still got to get along."

 _That's the problem,_ she wants to scream. Instead, she pivots and slips past him, perching on the corner of his bed as he closes the door. Cato sits beside her, his weight causing her to tip towards him. She straightens up with a scowl and slides away, staring at the ground. Her nails are still gold from the interview. She wiggles her toes and admires the way the paint gleams beneath the faint light from his alarm clock.

They sit like that for a few moments before Cato finally breaks the silence. "So why _are_ you here, anyway? Couldn't sleep?"

She bristles, but the remark isn't teasing bordering-on-condescending the way he usually is, so she lets her shoulders slump. "No," she admits. "I keep thinking about tomorrow."

"What about?" His eyes are fixed straight ahead on the spiderweb-fine strand of light entering through a crack in the door, his voice strangely neutral. She almost misses the old nasty-nice Cato; at least then she knew what to expect.

 _Dying. Killing kids. Killing_ you _._ Aloud, she just says, "Everything."

"Well, that narrows it down," he says so dryly she almost laughs. "Clove, you came here for a reason. I can't do anything about it unless you tell me."

"Are you going to kill me?" she blurts out.

He doesn't look at her. After a long pause, he answers, "I don't know."

"That's not the way this works," she argues. "You can't just _not know_ something! Either you will or you won't, and you don't have very long to decide."

He turns then, his eyes scorching in the near-blackness. "And what about you? Will you kill me?"

 _That's different,_ she wants to say, but it isn't, is it? "Yes," she says instead. Her voice does not tremble.

"Good," Cato spits, coiling like a cornered animal beside her, but a moment later, he softens. "We need a Victor this year."

"Don't you want it to be you?" she asks, studying him in the shadows.

"Sure," he says, shrugging. "Of course I want to live. Doesn't everyone?"

"But not everyone can," she says. "Just one. That's how you win."

He laughs without humor. "But they'll die in the end. Everyone dies sometime. This- winning the Games- it's just surviving a little bit longer than everyone else."

"That's enough for me," she says. "It doesn't matter what I have to do. Sure, we might all die eventually, but we're not dead yet."

"Aren't we?" Cato looks back at the sliver of light glowing around the door. "Everything we do, we say, we think: they _own_ us, Clove."

"Stop it," she demands, her voice too high, but he doesn't.

"We're just objects, or- or pieces in their games. They don't care about us. They never have." His eyes are burning with a strange fever as his voice climbs, and she leans away from him, terrified by his treason. "And if I make it out of the arena alive, I'll burn this whole place to the ground."

"Stop!" she screams. They stare at each other in the silence. His face is blurry, her vision damp, and she realizes with sickening horror that they will never, ever leave the arena. "I have to go."

She jumps off the bed like it burned her and races for the door, too frightened to act calm any more, but his voice stops her before she can open it. "Wait!" he calls out softly, all of that fire gone. And Snow help her, but she does.

"What?" she asks without turning around, her voice wavering.

"Please, just… don't leave me," he whispers, quietly enough that she could pretend she hadn't heard him, that she could just slip out of the door and act tomorrow like last night never happened, but she doesn't. Her hand slips off the doorknob, and slowly, slowly, she turns to face him. "We've only got a few more days left. Maybe even hours. That's too short to be alone."

Clove's not nearly stubborn enough, or stupid enough, to say otherwise, not when she knows that there are nothing but nightmares waiting in her own room. So she walks, dreamlike, back to him. He's already in his bed, face raw with gratitude, and she can't help but feel like she's making a mistake, letting him grow just that little bit more attached to her. It isn't fair to either of them. But she slips beneath the covers and moves closer until they're almost touching, and he relaxes for the first time that night. _What a sad, lonely boy he is,_ she thinks, but what does that make her?

A little while later, she whispers, "Hey, Cato."

Sleepily, he mumbles, "Yeah?"

Her heart is heavier than a stone; if they tossed her into a river, she'd sink. "Will you make it fast?"

The sound of his breathing is the only noise in the room for a very long time. "You won't feel a thing," he finally promises. Another pause. "And me? Will you kill me quickly?"

She exhales slowly, careful not to let her breath hitch. "I will," she tells him, but she means, _I can't._


End file.
